Cong demands fresh Assembly elections in Punjab

Chandigarh: Hitting out at the ruling Akali-BJP combine for recent “turmoil” in the State, opposition Congress today demanded resignation of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and holding of fresh assembly polls in the state which are otherwise due in early 2017.

Punjab Congress President Pratap Singh Bajwa held CM Badal directly responsible for the “anarchy in the state”.

He extended total support to the demands of the ‘Sant Samaj’ for the release of two brothers Rupinder Singh and Jaswinder Singh and registration of murder case against police officials allegedly responsible for opening fire killing two persons at Behbal Kalan in Punjab recently.

At the same time, Bajwa here today also demanded resignation of Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee President Avtar Singh Makkar “for the denigration of the higher Sikh institutions.”

Bajwa ridiculed Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal for trying to give impression that all was normal in the state by playing cards with the elderly at village Badal in Muktsar yesterday, and taking a dig at Sukhbir, further said, “when Rome was burning, Nero was fiddling.”

The Congress leader demanded independent probe, preferably a judicial one, into the acts of sacrilege “and the efforts to frame innocents in these cases”.

He said the two brothers should be released unconditionally and case of murder be registered against the “guilty police officials”.

The former Gurdaspur MP appealed to Akal Takht, supreme temporal seat of the Sikhs, to withdraw the honour of “Fakhr-e-Qaum Panth Rattan” bestowed upon CM Badal.

Notably, a court in Faridkot had sent Rupinder Singh and Jaswinder Singh, both brothers of Panjgrain Khurd village in Faridkot, to Judicial custody till November 11 in sacrilege case of Guru Granth Sahib.

Both of them had refuted the allegations of Punjab police and pleaded their innocence.

The parents and native villagers of the two brothers and members of Sikh community had claimed that the two persons had been framed up in the case even as police maintain that investigation was under process.

Punjab was under turmoil for nearly a fortnight after over eight incidents of sacrilege of holy book with Sikh protesters, including hardliners resorting to blocking of road traffic at several places in the state.

Police have so far arrested six people for their alleged involvement in sacrilege of the holy book at different places.